A panel talk between artist Gabriel Massan, Tamar Clarke-Brown, Arts Technologies Curator, and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director, Serpentine.
To celebrate the opening of their exhibition and the launch of their video game and web3 project at Serpentine, Third World: The Bottom Dimension, Gabriel Massan will be in conversation with Tamar Clarke-Brown, Arts Technologies Curator, and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Artistic Director Serpentine, to discuss interdisciplinary approaches to worldbuilding, experimental storytelling, playing and the ways in which we understand and orient ourselves in the world through technologies like gaming.
Presented in collaboration with Institut français du Royaume-Uni.
About the Exhibition and Game
Third World: The Bottom Dimension is a journey into a fantastical and thought-provoking world, built by a vital generation of Brazilian artists. It is an ongoing and multi-dimensional project by Gabriel Massan and collaborators, which includes an exhibition, web3 tokens built on Tezos and a video game that explores Black Brazilian experiences as they intersect with the impacts of colonialism. Designed as a responsive ecosystem, this interdisciplinary exhibition extends the ideas behind the video game, offering all visitors an opportunity to play and step inside the world of its concepts, emotions and mechanics, while seated in Massan’s sculptural playstations. The game uses world-building and collaborative storytelling to challenge colonialist concepts of ‘exploration’, ‘nature’ and ‘knowledge’ to encourage a different kind of wayfinding.
The project is conceptualised by Brazilian artist Gabriel Massan in collaboration with invited interdisciplinary artists Castiel Vitorino Brasileiro, Novíssimo Edgar, and vocalist and music producer LYZZA.
Third World: The Bottom Dimension is commissioned and produced by Serpentine Arts Technologies, and powered by Tezos
Artist Bio
- Gabriel Massan
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Gabriel Massan (b.1996 Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) is a Berlin-based multidisciplinary artist. Combining storytelling and worldbuilding, Massan creates worlds that simulate and narrate situations of inequality within the Latin American experience. Framed through a conceptual practice they call ‘fictional archaeology’, and working across 3D animation, digital sculpture, games, sound, and interactive installations, the artist challenges warped conceptions of the so-called ‘Third World’ while investigating possibilities for subversive otherness. Selected residencies and awards include the Arts Explora Program supported by Cité Internationale Des Arts (2023), Dazed 100 (2022), Circa x Dazed (2021), Instituto Moreira Salles (2020) and ETOPIA – Center for Art & Technology (2019). They have created significant commissions with Serpentine Arts Technologies (2022-3), Bangkok Biennale (2022), The Photographers’ Gallery (2022), and X Museum (2022). Massan has presented talks and conversations at institutions including La Biennale di Venezia, Art Basel Miami, DLD Conference, University College London, Royal College Of Arts and Institut Français. Recent exhibitions include: ‘WORLDBUILDING: Gaming and Art in the Digital Age” (Julia Stoschek Collection, 2022; Centre Pompidou-Metz, 2023); ‘Canon!’ (Frieze No.9 Cork Street, 2022) and ‘Possible Agreements’ (Mendes Wood DM, 2022). In June 2023, they launched the critically acclaimed multipart project ‘Third World: The Bottom Dimension’ at Serpentine, London, which includes a collaborative video game, multidisciplinary exhibition and web3 tokens.
